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But your examples also assume quite a few things would not change. Administration costs, facilities cost, number of teachers needed, etc would remain constants in order for your example to work. However, if you are serving a smaller student body in macro terms, your ancillary costs should subsequently decrease as well. If they do not, this would beg the question of why not?
Your premise is it is more efficient based on teacher salary alone but as you stated in another post, low teacher salary leads to lower quality. Would not increased student teacher ratio also lead to lower quality? So remove at least one of those variables - the high student teacher ratio. Already an improvement. Overall, I think you are ignoring too many variables to declare this once and for all as non-viable, at least in fiscal terms.
My example also omits the fact that a voucher isn't the full cost of a private education. I was only merely concerned with the cost of hiring a teacher versus getting a voucher.
If you want a full blown in depth analysis, then you'd need to take into account the full tuition of sending kids to private school and the voucher they'd get, versus public school. Mind you, if everyone paid $10,000/year to send 1 kid to private school, and a teacher was teaching 30 kids in a classroom, that would mean the private school has made $300,000. Does it take $300,000 to run 1 classroom in public schools? No way.
Edit:
Here's the math to back it up: Based on 2012-2013 school year, there were 1,089,000 kids enrolled in all of Arizona's public schools and the teacher/student ratio is 1:22.
So if each kid goes to private school, that'll cost $1,089,000 x $10,000 = 10,890,000,000, or $10.89B dollars. What is Arizona's spending on public education for FY 2017? It's budgeted for $4.08B.
Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Public_education_in_Arizona http://www.azospb.gov/Documents/2017...ary%20Book.pdf
If you want feel free to play with the numbers, but no matter how you cut it, if you assumed private school only cost the price of the voucher, you'd barely about equalize with the entire state budget for all of public education... hence, any other overhead costs are insignificant because of how far off the numbers are.
I didn't realize that the Teachers Union wasn't national. Well, at least in AZ you get what you pay for while in my blue state we pay a helluva lot for your same bad quality. Any parent who can afford it puts their kids in private schools, not even the elite schools but usually Catholic or religious schools even if their family isn't religious. The quality is so much better.
That is not the case around here. We have relatively few private schools and they are pricey and selective. The vouchers provided only cover 1/2 to 1/3 of what it would cost if your kid could get in. You don't get in if you don't have the grades or (in some cases don't fit the minority quota they want). 90% of Arizona's students attend public schools. Charter schools are public here as are traditional district schools. Some charters are excellent (and have long waiting lists) and others are much worse than the worst public schools. Like everywhere, the good public schools, the good charters, and the private schools are in the affluent neighborhoods. Poorer people have choices - they can drive their kids to the affluent areas and many do that. We have open enrollment boundaries. But for single or both parents who work, the transportation hurdles can be too great.
Arizona is Betsy DeVos' model of school choice. We have more of it than anyone and what we are doing here - public charters, home schooling, open school borders (and possibly tax payer supported religious schools if this referendum fails) could be coming to your town too.
That is not the case around here. We have relatively few private schools and they are pricey and selective. The vouchers provided only cover 1/2 to 1/3 of what it would cost if your kid could get in. You don't get in if you don't have the grades or (in some cases don't fit the minority quota they want). 90% of Arizona's students attend public schools. Charter schools are public here as are traditional district schools. Some charters are excellent (and have long waiting lists) and others are much worse than the worst public schools. Like everywhere, the good public schools, the good charters, and the private schools are in the affluent neighborhoods. Poorer people have choices - they can drive their kids to the affluent areas and many do that. We have open enrollment boundaries. But for single or both parents who work, the transportation hurdles can be too great.
Arizona is Betsy DeVos' model of school choice. We have more of it than anyone and what we are doing here - public charters, home schooling, open school borders (and possibly tax payer supported religious schools if this referendum fails) could be coming to your town too.
Interesting. In our parts, there are a plethora of options for private school in terms of cost. Everything from a few thousand a year up to $30-40k a year.
Interesting. In our parts, there are a plethora of options for private school in terms of cost. Everything from a few thousand a year up to $30-40k a year.
We might not have all the privates because, we don't have the segregation history that other places have. Many of those privates in other places opened to get around school integration. Most of Phoenix and Tucson has been built in the last 30 years. The schools and facilities are, for the most part, modern and safe and have some degree of diversity which no one really cares much about around here. We also have public charters that cater to those who want a rigorous education for their kids. AZ, in spite of the overall rotten school ratings, had if memory serves four of the top ten high schools in the country in the US News analysis. All of them were public schools.
We might not have all the privates because, we don't have the segregation history that other places have. Many of those privates in other places opened to get around school integration. Most of Phoenix and Tucson has been built in the last 30 years. The schools and facilities are, for the most part, modern and safe and have some degree of diversity which no one really cares much about around here.
Likely and add onto that, white flight, etc often seen on the east coast back in the day. Even small towns in the south, at least, have multiple private school options. So different history, different result I guess.
The U.S. Department of Education should not exist. States should make their own rules. That's what will happen in Arizona.
So if State X decides to invest heavily into education and State Y decides to not, resulting in a big gap of education between the citizens of X and Y, which then results to businesses looking to hire skilled people go to state X instead of Y, hence opportunities will be limited by State Y. People move from State Y to State X to pursue those opportunities. Should then State X then have the power to block immigration and deport those citizens back to State Y? (And if you didn't know... this action is illegal per federal law, but play along for the thought experiment.)
As much as we'd like to go along with your idea of state's should make their own rules... realities of implementation + cause and effect doesn't work that way.
The U.S. Department of Education should not exist. States should make their own rules. That's what will happen in Arizona.
The expansion of the voucher program was approved by the AZ state legislature, I'm not exactly sure what the role of the US Dept. of Ed is other than promoting charter schools.
Quote:
Technically called Empowerment Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, the Arizona program allows parents to take between 90 percent and 100 percent of the state money a local public school would receive to pay for private or religious education. The average student who isn't disabled currently receives about $6,000 a year to pay for tuition or other costs, while disabled students get about $20,000.
I didn't realize that the Teachers Union wasn't national. Well, at least in AZ you get what you pay for while in my blue state we pay a helluva lot for your same bad quality. Any parent who can afford it puts their kids in private schools, not even the elite schools but usually Catholic or religious schools even if their family isn't religious. The quality is so much better.
Any parent huh? My husband and I offered to pay our grandson's private school tuition and we left it up to our son to pick the school. He researched all of the private schools and ended up choosing a very high rated public open enrollment fundamental elementary school.
Not all public schools are bad, the problem is that public schools in poor areas are almost always bad which leaves the people who can least afford to pay for private school with the fewest options.
Education commissar would be a more accurate term. What better a system that one person on a throne in far away DC should decide the education needs for children in KS, AZ etc.
Public education is child abuse.
Your adversion to publicly- funded education is known. Most people do not agree.
Why would the educational needs for children in KS be different fron AZ?
What might state/ local taxes look like without federal funding?
Why should a state/ district within, decide for themselves what every child should know/ when?
How does that benefit the child if they live in a state/ district with low standards?
Colleges/ universities use standardized test scores as a part of the criteria used to accept/ deny admission. Should those students in states/ districts with low standards be assigned a handicap?
Parents seem to take great personal pride when their children do well in school and blame when their children do not.
The Dems don't want the poor and minorities to be able to choose better schools for their kids like rich people do. They want a dumbed down electorate that they can manipulate. Teachers union is one of the most powerful in the country. They don't want to actually have to work hard and get good results
Exactly this. It's completely obvious.
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(And if you didn't know... this action is illegal per federal law, but play along for the thought experiment.)
